Instant messaging has been very popular for quite some time now. Although services like Twitter have somewhat tarnished the appeal of IM, chatting with your friends on Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger is not going away any time soon.

Here are some of the top tips and tricks that you can use to get more out of Instant messaging.

Set up an Answering Machine

Need an answering machine for your IM network to automatically respond to messages when you are offline? Well you can hack out a bot and have it running, monitoring the incoming messages and replying appropriately or you can simply sign into your account and set response messages.

[NO LONGER WORKS] Answer.im allows you to do just that. You are not even required to register. Log in with the IM credentials of the account you want set up answering for, set the status that will be shown to the users and then type the autoresponse text that will be sent back to the users in case someone happens to ping you while you are offline.

You shouldn’t be running Yahoo Messenger and GTalk separately and then switching between windows when all kinds of notifications are flashing on your screen. Try something like pidgin. It might lack the occasional feature or two (like voice calls) but it more than makes up for itPidgin - Tips and TricksPidgin - Tips and TricksRead More with tabbed interfaces, a rich set of plugins, customizations, availability for Windows, Linux and Mac and of course the price -> “free”.

Ditch desktop clients altogether

Using a netbook? Or don’t have permissions to install your favorite IM clients? Look towards the web and you won’t be disappointed. There are plenty of choices to help you get that joke across to your buddies even if that nasty admin has all sorts of ‘permission thingys’ going on!

Encrypt your chat

There are good people like you (yes, I really meant YOU) and then there are bad people. Bad people like to spy on other people, perhaps steal some personal information that can then be used for all kinds of weird stuff.

As for encrypting the chat log, you just need to find the location of log files and encrypt them on your computer using something like Truecrypt or just move it to a private directory if you are using ubuntu with ecryptfs.

Suprised not to see Trillian mentioned here. It is a single client for many IM services (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Y!M) but also allows you to be signed on to several account on the same service at the same time -- great if you have a few MSN idenrities (one for work, one for personal etc.). I have been using it for 8 years or more and where it lacks VOIP calls and the like you'll find yourself still using it as other solutions come and go.

I am Varun Kashyap from India. I am passionate about Computers, Programming, Internet and the Technologies that drive them. I love programming and often I am working on projects in Java, PHP, AJAX etc.